The life of a country gardener.

9th Sept. Bulb planter offer.

Whenever a magazine features an item from our website I buy in extra stock to make sure we have enough to cover the increased demand. Sometimes the expected demand doesn't materialise and we're left with too much stock. This is the case at the moment with our hand held bulb planters. I thought sales would rocket after a feature in Gardens Illustrated last year, but I was a little too optimistic and now have lots of these lovely bulb planters waiting to go to good homes. 

Now that bulb planting season is upon us I thought I'd offer my blog readers a third off their usual price of £15. By entering code BULBPL5 you'll get a lovely fiver off your bulb planter. Offer will end on Dec 1st. 

NB They come in nice boxes making them easy to wrap up for presents!   

Sept 1st. Last open garden success.

Sunday was the last of our open gardens here for this year. I hope to open again next spring for those who missed it this time round.

I had a fantastic group of helpers who kindly offered their time to help out on the day. In the picture is Lucy (8) who made a lovely chocolate cake and helped out for two of our open days.

 

Again we had over 200 visitors in one afternoon and raised over £1000 for charity! I'll post details of next years openings as soon as I know them.  

14th August. A Royal invite.

The postman brought only one letter yesterday. "It's from the queen" he exclaimed looking at the bright coloured crest on the thick white envelope. "Oh just another party invite" I replied as if I received them regularly! I had a feeling what it might be and hurried inside to open it. The first line made my day. "His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales would be delighted for you and five guests to tour the garden at Highgrove on ....(I can't reveal the exact date but it's in September). Only question now is who the lucky five will be (I'm open to bribes)?!

August 3rd. Jeanine Mason superstar!

The reason we holiday in Miami so often is not just because it's the coolest place on Earth, or the amazing weather, but we have some great family friends over there, The Masons. They are little B's godparents and one of the nicest families you could ever meet. Whenever we have spent time with the Masons over the past 12 years their daughter Jeanine has always been coming or going to dance lessons or staying up late into the night to study. We always knew she was going to make it big one day, and now at just 18 she has become the name everyone is talking about in America. 

Over the past few months I have been spending a lot of time on You Tube following Jeanines progress on US TV show 'So You Think You Can Dance'. It's like X Factor but aims to find Americas best dancer. Unfortunately we can't get FOX TV over here but the whole show is available within hours courtesy of You Tube. This week is the final where Jeanine is the favourite to win the show against another three contestants. I have just discovered 'Skype' which enables me to vote from the UK. So this week I won't be getting much sleep! 

Please have a look on Youtube at the many hundreds of videos of Jeanine dancing, she is so amazing. Search 'SYTYCD Jeanine'. And if you are able to vote please do so, every single vote counts. 

followup: She won!

30th June. New discovery.

Whilst searching for a supplier of a tree I saw in Lord Heseltines garden recently (Pterocarya insignis) I stumbled across an amazing little nursery called Pan - Global plants. Nick Macer the owner spends the winter months traveling to remote far away places  to bring back new and exciting plants. I can't wait to get to his nursery and garden to have a look (and bring back some plants of course). You must check out this website too where Nick has posted some stunning photos from his last  trip to Mexico. 

Unfortunately Nick didn't have any of these trees for sale (he has three of his own!) so if anyone knows where I can get one please let me know. 

16th June. Garden open again.

On Sunday we opened the garden here for the third time this year. While numbers were slightly down on our spring opening it was still busy enough! The weather was quite hot so I think lots of people would have been in their pool or BBQing instead. Our visitors made themselves at home though having a nap in the sleeping garden and taking a swim! Everyone I spoke to commented on the view from the garden to Felsted. By pure coincidence this field was ablaze with poppies. It belongs to a local farmer who has a reputation for not being able to grow anything successfully - maybe he should try wildflowers.

15th June. Lord Heseltines garden visit.

Another busy weekend out of the way. On Saturday I trekked (not literally) across the country to visit Lord Heseltines garden on the Oxfordshire / Northamptonshire border. It took a lot longer than anticipated to get there after the Sat. Nav. decided it wasn't going to help and the absence of any kind of road map in the car! We had to rely on the old fashioned method of reading road signs, sitting in traffic jams and screaming at each other! After a lovely lunch we had calmed down and enjoyed a nice stroll around the gardens. 

While not entirely my thing (landscape garden mostly), there were lots of features in the garden I liked.

Firstly my Fontaine Aixoise - found in only the grandest of gardens! looked stunning amongst a bed of rolling clipped box. Unfortunately box blight had got to much of the box in the garden, this planting is the least affected. 

The house itself was stunning, with it's symmetrical proportions and huge windows overlooking the surrounding landscape. 

In the woodland areas three were many fine specimen trees including Cornus covered in milky white bracts, Davidia involucrata (pocket hankerchief tree) and the amazing Pterocarya Insignis which I cannot find (to buy) anywhere! 

The walled vegetable garden has to be the grandest I've seen with many wierd and wonderful features like the huge aviary, the auricula theatre, strange gazebo like structures all over as well as lawns and box hedging. There was a lovely Georgian 'gardeners cottage' on the edge of the garden for which I'd be very happy to take on the role of head gardener!

For more photos of the garden at Thenford click here.

12th June 09. Great news!

After a rubbish week it is really nice to get some good news. I just had a e-mail from garden photographer Suzie Gibbons (who recently did a photo shoot in the garden here) who wanted to let me know that 'Homes & Gardens' magazine plan to run a feature on the garden, business and myself! It won't be out until next spring but something to look forward to. Will keep you posted as to when it's expected.

In the meantime why not come along this Sunday and see the garden for yourself? We're opening this Sunday 14th from 1 till 5pm. 

June 10th. Massacre in the meadow.

I have just noticed that the husband instructed our groundsman yesterday to strim down the 'overgrown stuff' along a driveway of approx 200m by 3m deep. The 'overgrown stuff' in question was a drift of wildflowers on the cusp of flowering! Would fellow gardeners agree that that is a sackable offence? I'm talking about the husband not the groundsman (he was just following orders - although he should know better than not to check with me first!). 

What makes the cutting down of these wildflowers all the more upsetting is that the wildflower meadow I have tried to create behind the greenhouse here has failed miserably this year. It is full of docks and horsetail, and there's not a flower to be seen, despite the seeds scattered and allowing last years flowers to set seed. They do say it's incredibly hard to make a successful wildflower meadow - it seems to be a full time job.

Whilst I'm having a moan I may as well moan about the weather and say how the torrential rain today has ruined all the roses that were looking fabulous, and once I have deadheaded all the soggy ones there won't be much of a show for the open garden this Sunday.

However on the bright side I'm looking forward to visiting Lord Heseltines garden (I wonder if his roses have been ruined too?) this Saturday and lunch prior at Le Manoir. 

June 7th. Radio interview.

Yesterday I spent the morning at BBC Essex and was interviewed by gardening expert Ken Crowther. When they first asked if I would go on their show I was a little nervous at the thought of being interviewed live as I was sure to say something stupid! After my excuses ran out (I have a bad cough can we record it?!) I couldn't avoid it any longer and reluctantly took myself into the station.

 

It turned out to be much easier than expected thanks to Ken who is an experienced interviewer - although my interview only lasted five minutes so maybe he thought he'd better get me off air!

We talked about why I open the garden for the NGS, what the garden is like, how the website came about and rambled on for far too long about dogs in the garden. 

I'll try to find a way of adding the clip here but in the meantime if you want to hear the interview you have until Saturday lunchtime to listen on BBC iPlayer (I think this link should get you there  http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0038k0c/Essex_Gardening_06_06_2009/) fast forward the show (if you don't want to listen to three hours of chat) to about 2 hours and 28 mins.